Thanks to James Thrall Soby’s (author, critic, connoisseur, collector and patron of the arts) enthusiasm for Surrealism and passion for Williams College, Matta’s “Rain” has published, exhibited, and been very much enjoyed by museum staff and visitors alike since 1950.

At WCMA, we are constantly learning about our permanent collection. With more than 13,000 objects, there is always something for us to research. Objects accumulate new information over time and since we are charged with caring for works in our collection, we are responsible for tracking the “life of an object.”

Last week Rachel Tassone and I went to Washington D.C. to present about our Prendergast Digitization Project at a conference. We learned a good amount from our colleagues and were excited to get the word out about our project.

I am one of a handful of people who has seen, handled, photographed, studied, and marveled over every ancient object in the museum’s collection as part of WCMA’s ongoing digital imaging project. That’s more than 2,000 objects, and among them the beads are the smallest.

During World War II, works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston were stored at the Williams College Museum of Art, and the MFA was so grateful to the museum for keeping their objects safe during wartime they gave us a facsimile Egyptian head and let us put on a paintings exhibition of their works which were not normally loaned out.